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Comment by grzm | Hacker News Reader

"Purging people based on political opinions is exactly how democracy is supposed to function."

What does "purging" mean to you in this case? You've now provided two examples: firing and voting. What level of political disagreement justifies what actions? I don't think there's widespread agreement, and it's something I'm trying to figure out for myself.

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> You've now provided two examples: firing and voting.

Voting someone out of office is firing them. We're talking about firing.

Cool. I can see that for the purposes of this discussion. Is this only a workplace issue in your mind? At least for right now? Other aspects on my mind is what kind of heuristic do you use to determine if the political opinion is fireable? Or rather, it's not only what the opinion is (there are a lot of controversial political issues), or the opinion itself, it's the expression of it, right? For example, something said (some sort of speech act), or some other behavior.

Maybe for you this is some abstract problem for which you enjoy dreaming up an endless stream of meandering questions. For me it's a matter of "are the people above me in management going to fuck me over because of my sexuality?". And if I have evidence that they might, either they need to go or I need to go. And if I like my job, I'd rather it be them than me.

So for the sake of LGBT Mozilla employees, I'm glad Eich was shown the door. I'm not interested in entertaining a bunch of fluffy questions about heuristics, expression of opinion, what "purging" really means, or whatever. That's just noise.

I've been fortunate that I haven't had to deal with this firsthand, which is exactly why I'm asking. Thanks for taking the time to get back to me. I appreciate it.

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